Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Perinatal Mental Health Team

Welcome to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough perinatal mental health team.
Perinatal mental health
We support mums and mums-to-be who are experiencing mental health challenges during pregnancy and the first year of motherhood.
We are a multi-disciplinary team of specialist mental health clinicians working across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, which aims to:
- Offer a safe, empathic, and supportive service which holds women and their families’ experiences in mind.
- Work closely with our colleagues in maternity and health visiting, and across the wider community organizations, to develop a seamless, integrated service for pregnant and new mums.
- Increase awareness and understanding of mental health challenges in the local community and help reduce stigma.
Our philosophy
- We prioritise building trusting relationships and being able to work alongside you and your family.
- We believe that we need to consider a family’s needs as a whole during this significant time of change and stress
- We hope to make the future better by targeting support at this critical stage in a family’s growth.
- We aspire to be a team of blended skills and expertise which works creatively, thoughtfully and innovatively.
Our team
We have nurses, occupational therapists, doctors, psychologists, nursery nurses, support workers and social workers in our team and we are all trained to support women with serious and complex mental health difficulties during the perinatal period.
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North Team |
South Team |
Administrator | ||
Our friendly admin team are probably the first people you will come across in our service! |
Beena Padmanabhan
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Kate Taylor
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Senior Admin | ||
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Wendy Belding
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Team Manager | ||
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Anne Merricks
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Psychiatrist | ||
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Mukhtar Awad Nasir
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Nikolett Kabacs |
Psychologist | ||
Fiona and Jo support women and their families to understand and overcome mental health difficulties as far as possible, helping them to be in the best position to bond with their baby. |
Fiona Ram |
Jo Peterkin |
Assistant Psychologist | ||
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Emilie Scowen
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Senior Perinatal Specialist Nurse | ||
Our nurses assess women and their families and work with them to make plans to support and help them through pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. |
Juli Broder |
Sarah Ennis |
Debs Murthwaite |
Emily McLaughlin |
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Laura Purran |
Kellie Sargent |
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Occupational therapist | ||
Sarah and Nadean work with women during the perinatal period to enable wellbeing with the use of meaningful therapeutic activity. |
Sarah Morrison
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Nadean Saberton
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Sam Vollenhoven
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Nursery Nurse | ||
Emily & Joy support families with everything “baby”, from play, attachment, feeding to developmental needs. |
Emily Murdoch |
Joy Willett |
Support Worker | ||
Clare provides practical support for women and their families to improve their functioning and well-being. |
Clare Cornforth |
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Our partners
We work closely with obstetricians, midwives and health visitors and PWS to support the families in our care.
Midwives and obstetricians
Specialist mental health obstetricians and midwives ensure women get continuity of care with clinicians who have expertise in supporting those with mental health challenges. They work closely with the perinatal mental health team to support the family as they welcome their baby.
Pre-birth planning meetings encourage joined up thinking between all the people looking after the women and take into account a detailed birth plan made with the women to best support them before, during and after birth.
The hospitals are sometimes able to offer longer stays postnatally to give added support after birth.
Rosie Hospital, Cambridge |
Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon |
Peterborough City Hospital |
Obstetricians | ||
Michelle Kemp |
Sangeeta Pathak
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Michael Lumb
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Alison Wilson
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Midwives | ||
Kaat de Backer |
Nicky Pearson-Day
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Lesley Edwards |
Health visitors | ||
Hilda Beauchamp |
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0-19 Healthy Child Programme – Health Visitors
Health visitors are qualified nurses or midwives with an additional specialist Community Public Health Nursing qualification. We work as part of the 0-19 Healthy Child Programme team to support you in your parenting journey, offering advice on a range of issues including infant feeding, sleep, child development and minor illnesses.
We can offer additional support in the form of ‘listening visits’ at home for parents experiencing mild to moderate anxiety and depression and other mental health concerns, and we are well-placed to refer you to community-based support groups and other resources to help you feel less isolated. If you have concerns about how you are bonding with your baby, we can support you with reading your baby’s early cues and behaviours, and can offer video-based support (VIG) to increase your confidence.
We work closely with our colleagues in the specialist perinatal mental health team, and with your GP and midwife to co-ordinate our care in a way that you feel is best. We have a specialist health visitor for family mental health, as well as ‘champion’ health visitors in perinatal and infant mental health, who liaise with other professionals, and offer training and guidance to all our staff so that you feel confident in the advice and support you receive.
Referrals
We take direct referrals from GPs, midwives and health visitors. GPs can also refer via the Primary Care Mental Health Service.
Parents and parents-to-be should contact their GPs in the first instance.
For urgent referrals for women experiencing a mental health crisis please call the First Response Service on the NHS 111 helpline and select option 2.
Information for professionals
We offer advice and support to other professionals. You can call our admin team on 0800 952 0060 and leave a phone number or e-mail address and a duty worker will contact you between 1-5pm Monday to Friday.
Professionals can make direct referrals – download this from the bottom of this page.
GPs can refer directly or via the Primary Care Mental Health Service. For guidance see our leaflet: Advice for GPs
For urgent referrals for women experiencing a mental health crisis, please call the First Response Service on the NHS 111 helpline and select option 2.